5-2-1 Tsukiji Central Ward 6 Tsukiji
Phone: 03-3547-6797
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Favorites Japanese Sushi Tokyo
"We're in a sushi-induced trance when the red snapper arrives, a thin red stripe giving it a sophistication that the same fish never has when cooked. It's beautiful, then it's gone."
Tokyo is surely a city that never sleeps, but four in the morning is probably as close to rest as it comes. As we exit our hotel onto the streets of hyper-kinetic Shibuya, the two-story video screens are off or in test patterns, the wall to wall crowds have all but evaporated, and virtually every person left in our path to the subway is wearing the shy smile or sneaky grin associated with late night fun and mischief. We understand why; between the frozen bamboo tube of sake and the brilliant izakaya fare we put down last night, we were happy, too, but unlike these stragglers who were waiting for the subways to reopen towards their homes, we were out on an early morning mission: procure sushi from the Tsukiji Fish Market.
We've discussed the market's famous Sushi Dai and Daiwa Sushi in earlier articles, two almost neighboring restaurants with reputations for offering the best sushi in Tokyo, which by justified leap of logic might make them purveyors of the best sushi in the world. On this particular morning, the sky still dark as night, we arrive at Sushi Dai a little after 5am to find a line that's strangely manageable - 15 people deep from earlier queuing - and the line in front of the slightly inferior Daiwa Sushi is longer, a curiosity. We soon learn why: Sushi Dai's line has been split in two so as not to block an adjacent storefront, and the stream of businessmen, small groups of women, and young couples wraps around the corner. Like everyone else in the line, we've decided that we will wait as long as necessary. Thirty minutes later, a cluster of people is brought from our line to the other, and our line is 'managed' - moved off the sidewalk and compressed by a woman who is here to control the crowds. It's the first time we recall being managed in a secondary line, and two hours will ultimately pass before we're allowed in.
As we wait, we reflect on the other forms of sushi we've tried in Japan - ones that are nowhere near as well-known or popular outside the country. A week ago, we were eating artistic hako-zushi in Osaka; days later, we sampled an old-fashioned vinegared, persimmon leaf-wrapped mackerel and salmon sushi (shown below) called kakinoha-zushi in Nagoya, and there are other and sometimes older versions sold here if you know where to look. But at this point in time, they are mere curiosities by comparison with the more popular type, and to our tastes nowhere near as delicious - the heavy vinegar was used as a preservative at a time when refrigeration wasn't available or reliable, and now seems grossly overbearing. Though we ate and enjoyed the hako-zushi, we pitched out the kakinoha-zushi after only a few pieces. We can get rancid-tasting mackerel anywhere.
Sushi Dai enjoys an unusual advantage over most of the world's sushi restaurants, and even the ones in Tokyo: it is located literally inside the world's best fish market, a fountainhead of massive tuna and many fish so exotic that even locals can't identify them by name. It's not easy to find in the dark of early morning, but a few arrow-laden signs point generally in the right direction once you've exited a nearby subway line. Arriving at Tsujiki Station blocks away, you need to find the place yourself; it is far easier from Tsukikishijo Station on a different subway line. Once you arrive, you need to know to look for building six, then figure out which of the two tiny restaurants with large lines is Sushi Dai - it's the one closer to the red mailbox. The signs are entirely in Japanese, unlike Daiwa, which has mostly Japanese signage, plus small English characters on paper menus posted by its doors.
Even those menus are surplusage in the sense that you initially have only the most limited choice of menu items. Forget the California Rolls, the Burning Dragon Volcanos, and the Beef on Weck Rolls. The way to order here is Omakase (oh mah kah say), or Chef's Choice, and you pick only from either a 7-piece meal for around $30 or a 10-piece meal for around $40. Bear in mind that this is a small price to pay for the best parts of the freshest fish found anywhere in Japan; Sushi Dai's chefs could pick poorly and you'd still be eating better fish than at virtually any restaurant you've ever visited. Seriously. Each piece of nigiri sushi - raw fish on top of rice - is hand-assembled by people standing in front of you, and looks like an edible piece of art as it arrives. Once you've finished the omakase course, you can select additional individual pieces listed on a menu - one that we photographed and included here as we've never seen it posted anywhere.
By the time we are seated, the sky is bright, and the line has only grown since we arrived. It's 7:20am. The line manager has appeared only one more time, to ask our one menu preference - smaller or larger omakase set - and whether there's anything we can't eat. Bring it all on, we said, in the bigger set. Soon thereafter, we join 12 other people at the restaurant's lone counter for the 40-minute omakase meal, squeezing ourselves onto cushioned metal stools.
After a hearty ohayo gozaimasu ("good morning!") - the three chefs are amazingly friendly and accommodating, attending to each of the customers or couples individually - the meal begins: a hot, palate-cleansing cup of green tea, followed by a dollop of pickled ginger on the lacquered counter in front of us. Rather than using plates, everything is served on this counter, and the sushi chef wipes it down between every couple pieces of sushi. Like the tea, the sweet and crisp ginger is there to refresh you between pieces, to offer a reset of your taste buds that will let you appreciate each new piece of fish even more. We actually use it here, unlike most restaurants, as it's as fresh as the fish and useful in distinguishing the tastes of the varied fish.
First up is the toro, a piece of high end fatty tuna so marbled that it melts like butter in the mouth, arriving gently brushed with soy so as to have a slightly salty taste, plus literally a whisper of wasabi in the wet, soft bed of rice beneath. It's perfect, high-end raw fish, perfectly balanced with body temperature rice, and a deliberately powerful start to the meal. This is followed by a bowl of burning hot red miso soup, which as with soups here in the past, uses fresh fish for flavoring - this time, chunks of fish meat and bones are in the bottom, adding more taste and peril than the baby clams we found in an earlier bowl.
Other pieces pass in a blur. Sea bass, a mild tasting and slightly chewy fish, is one of several served with an instruction: no soy sauce. Left unadulterated, the silky texture of the bass meat and the wasabi in the rice bed shine through to an even greater extent than in the toro. We're already melting into a sushi trance. Only two pieces in and we're already focusing more on the look of the fish than the sublime tastes, so when red snapper arrives, a thin red stripe giving it a sophistication that the same fish never has when cooked, we're barely thinking. It's beautiful, then it's gone.
Up next is an omelet, commonly served as a thin slice above a bed of rice and wrapped with nori, but at Sushi Dai, you instead get huge chunks of the omelet - thick, sweet, and awesome - with the telltale tree ring-like layers revealing the complexity of the seemingly simple egg's preparation into this form. But for the ginger, the power of the omelet's sweetness would counteract the next piece of sushi, sea urchin, the natural sugar of which can be a telltale sign of freshness; it is indeed sweet, fresh, and moist without being watery. This is the place where, years ago, we learned to like sea urchin; the freshness is the reason why, and at Sushi Dai, we never have to ask if it's fresh.
Other pieces follow one by one. Standard meguro tuna is amazingly red, pre-basted with soy for a taste that we wish would never leave, and dabbed with a pea-sized bit of wasabi up top. A lightly sweet and rubbery surf clam is still moving as it arrives on a bed of rice, leading people to whip out their cameras and phones as the edges curl up. More photogenic is the horse mackerel, iridescent and presented with beautiful toppings, and the baby shrimp, a full layer of shiny white miniature C-shapes that are sadly overpowered a little by the wasabi in the rice. Uncommonly wonderful in flavor is the salmon roe, exploding little salty balls mixed with a little soy, the saltiness more delicate than the version available at any sushi restaurant. Yet a four-piece mixed set of tuna roll and spicy tuna is only decent: the spicy stuff is interesting in that it includes sesame seeds. straight pepper, and very finely chopped tuna - possibly the finest chopped fish we've ever felt on our tongues - and the tuna blocks come from the same high-quality meat used in the nigiri rolls. English-speaking people seated besides us have picked out the meat and left the rice and avocado untouched; the nori and rice aren't all that impressive here.
Thankfully, the last item in the omakase is something close to wonderful: sea eel that has been grilled gently to a delicious, almost sweet potato like texture and flavor, the only cooked item of the bunch, it's like a dessert. But we're not ready to leave quite yet: now it's our turn to choose pieces we want to sample. Even though we're armed with the menu, we again trust the chef, who recommends the yellowtail and standard mackerel as the best items of the day. We also get a piece of the super fatty ootoro tuna and another of the meguro tuna, which are basically flawless; Sushi Dai's tuna is always awesome.
The yellowtail pieces we receive - the chef was right, we ordered a second - are insane, big and thick enough by sushi standards to slap someone in the face with the fish. We've had pieces of sushi fish big enough to drape off of their beds of rice, but these extend past the rice by three or four times; there is no yellowtail we've ever had, even at Sushi Dai in the past, that's quite as fresh or huge as this. By comparison, the mackerel is equally fresh, but smaller, chewier, and has a hint of ocean saltiness; it's also wonderfully delicious but would be hard to pick out of a lineup on taste alone.
We leave in a sushi-induced daze, stumbling out into the sunlight only to notice that the line is even longer - 60 or more people waiting at 8:15 in the morning to eat sushi. The total bill? About $60 per person with all five of the added on pieces. And it was worth every dollar. We barely gave the bill a glance before paying it, still in some weird state of hypnosis from the fish - that raw, lightly flavored fish that by all means should not be as outstanding as something battered, then fried, then mixed with a heavy sauce. Why should a single piece of the highest-end Japanese tuna cost more than a full entree at a Chinese restaurant?
Every bite of this meal helped that make sense to us, as it has to sushi chefs for years: when meat is truly great, it can be served as beautiful sushi and appreciated even raw, but if it starts bad or goes bad, a lot of extra cooking and work will be required to make it taste good again. Unlike heavy sauce- and seasoning-dependent fish preparations in other cuisines, the power of truly world-class sushi is in its ability to mesmerize in elegance, and though Sushi Dai mightn't have the dining room or the plating of a fancy restaurant, its sushi is engrossing, and an outstanding value relative to other such places. One meal here will be enough to help any foodie understand why he or she should expect more from a local favorite sushi shop, and quite possibly permanently change one's tastes and perspective for the better. Decor and wait aside, sushi is supposed to be like this; everything else is merely an approximation.
